The invention relates to a medical communication system and a communication method.
It is known in the art to equip medical devices such as medical pumps (e.g. infusion pumps) with wireless communication capabilities permitting the medical devices to communicate with a network (such as a hospital network) via a wireless communication link (using, for example, the Wi-Fi standard). The wireless communication link to the network in particular is established via an access point of the network, wherein the medical devices located in the range (the region of coverage) of the access point will connect to the access point. An example of a medical communication system using wireless communication links is described in U.S. Pat. No. 6,406,426 B1.
However, an access point can only support a limited number of connections (e.g. 128), wherein this number may not be sufficient to allow all medical devices within the range of the access point to connect to the access point while maintaining an acceptable quality of service level.
It is an object of the invention to allow multiple medical devices to connect to an access point for wireless communication while maintaining the quality of service level.